Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Mother Of All Questions 20170409

[inaudible conversations] good evening, friends. Welcome to the Berkeley Hillside Club and the latest in a series of events produced by the wonderful folks at berkeley arts and letters. We are very privileged to have been as a regular contributor to our cultural events here. Evan karp is the boss and you having to think and his volunteers to thank for this come for all these wonderful events. [applause] how many of you have been in this hall before . A fair number, thats good. How many of you havent and havent a clue what this place is . Thats great because uncle to take about 30 seconds to tell you about the Berkeley Hillside Club pick the club itself was founded in 1898 by a group of berkeley women who were really concerned about the plans the city fathers had for laying a grit over this thing and paving and grading and instead they got really active physically active. We think we probably need some more about these days. But there able to get the city to turn up the wait has and a large measure is just one of the most beautiful cities in this part of the country. In 1910 that gentleman under the two lights out there, bernard, he was a president in 1910 and he designed and built the first clubhouse. Unfortunately it burned out and a huge conflagration which swept through this entry. 80 of his clients homes were burned as well. It was much bigger than the oakland fire. Such replace the beautiful clubhouse investor and decide his brotherinlaw come under the architect named john white built this wonderful tudor revival structure and its been our clubhouse ever since. We have a long tradition of involvement in civic activities. Where cultural activities. We do concerts and talks like this one and dances and dinners. If youre interested in joining the Hillside Club, either our membership applications in the hall, our membership roles are currently open. Its a great or position to become a part and help contribute to. If youre also, shameless commerce i apologize this come we rented this all for certain discrete event. We dont do fraternity mixers, but earth day parties and memorials are people look for that format. In any case, keep that in mind if youre interested, rentals at Hillside Club. Org will get you there. I think thats all i have it if you have any of those electronic annoyances that were all too often tended to care in a pocket please turn them off. If there are any empty seats available, raise your hand next to a 90 seat. A couple of them. I was looking for seats still . I think we are good. All right comes im going to bring it evan up, berkeley arts and letters, let them take over from here. Thank you very much. [applause] hi, everyone. Thank you, Bruce Bigelow to think the Hillside Club for hosting us tonight and as a regular host for our series. We generally come with an event for seven years. We host exceptional authors and thinkers with new books. Its a Pretty Simple concept. We have hosted everybody from patti smith to eduardo and michael. You can find out more about our past and Upcoming Events berkeleyarts. Org. Tonight we are excited to be hosting Rebecca Solnit in support of her new book, the mother of all questions, and with her tonight is jeff chang, im very pleased that jeff back with us. With anybody here in november when we hosted to jeff ballou . Awesome. So you are very excited like me to have him back. [laughing] i do, i just want to thank both rebecca and jeff for being here tonight. These are, these guys are asking the hard questions for all of us in fighting on behalf of all of our rights. I just want to give them a round of applause. [applause] so im going to read a little bit about them and then get out of the way, just in case there are books others that you dont know about, youre about to find out. So Rebecca Solnit is a writer, pestering from activist and writewhatabout 60 books about a, king of the art, politics, hope and memory including the National Bestseller main explain things to me, opened the door, the faraway nearby, a paradise built in hell, i field guide to getting lost, a history of walking, a river of shadows. The technological wild west. For which she received a guggenheim, the National Book critics circle award in criticism and the land and literary award. A product of the California Public Education System from kindergarten [applause] shes a contributing editor to harpers, and as you probably know the mother of all questions is a collection, a new collection of feminist essays. Joining rebecca as a set is jeff chang. Jeff has most recently published we gon be alright which is a total mustread collection i should mention we have all the books, not all of the books, but we have a bunch books in the back. Amy is waving at you right now. So berkeley arts and letters is organized by booksmith in San Francisco and we would be happy to sell you books tonight. So jeff has written extensively on culture, politics and the arts pick a second creek lakeland book was released in paperback recently under the title who would be. He cofounded culture strike and color wars and color lines, and serves as executive director of the institute for diversity in the arts at Stanford University. Hes been a usa winner of the north star news prize. He was named by the reader one of 50 visionaries changing your world. In 2016 he was named as one of his 100 list of those shaping the future of american culture. Would you guys might helping me welcoming them to the stage . [applause] whats so funny about that . [laughing] i didnt want to spill it. I think david was laughing at me for pulling books out of my bag or something. Good evening. Hello. Thank you so much to evan, to berkeley arts and letters, to the booksmith staff, wonderful staff, to the Hillside Club, to all of you for coming out tonight. I get the honor of asking you questions tonight. Well, hiphop, right . Although i dont wrap. Im not going to wrap tonight. Shall we start . We shall. The last time i got to talk you had just gotten back if i remember correctly from Standing Rock. Was it that long ago . I went down to incentive edges with a real sense about that was at the center of the world and wanted to see what was happening. And it was amazing being there. I was lucky i went out when the weather was balmy. I is so much admiration for the people who stuck it out through the winter. Its one of those things. You know, like occupy, like the air spring, like black lives matter were nobody knew it was coming, and thats one of the things i like quinoa supposed to talk about this book, but we could talk about this one, too. We definitely well. Iic, and so much of a Standing Rock which fell like i was not not there address one pipeline, but to really kind of remedy and turn half a millennium of a ratio dehumanization and disposition and i think in meaningful ways has done that and a lot of ways we dont know what Standing Rock has done because it wont take decades to find out. But yeah, it was amazing being out there. Lets pursue the idea in the second, but also if remember correctly, when youre coming back from north dakota you were sitting next to a trump supporter . This is what happens when youre from San Francisco. Ive had two conversations with trump supporters. [laughing] you know, my friends in nevada and new mexico, i was, i dont know what to remember. Both of them were voting for a man who was completely fictitious. It wasnt even the official trump propaganda. It was there imaginary ideal trump. Their platonic trump. [laughing] who was at this platonic trump to them . On the way back to Standing Rock i sat next to an evangelical farmer who sends both at addiction problems, which is how you know youre in america. The kind of agrarian junkie, you know, and he was like, this is right around, was it before the grabbed him by the waxed he brought all the scandals were fabricated and that was a really who come he thought he was a much better man. He basically thought trump was a lot more like him than any of them. And then every four years my amazing friends all focus, that radical Progressive Coalition for the kid nevada. I do the get out and vote. Its my sacrifice to try to ward off evil. I was collectively suburb about ten miles north of downtown we are doing it at the boat and this Foundation Woman started badgering me because shoes there to get out the vote for trumpet and i just wanted to get why she liked trump that you two think usually committed to come and that there was no arguing with her beverages convinced that and document immigrants were preventing her family from, she was egyptian, she thought and document immigrants were preventing her family from Legal Immigration as though the quotas system was somehow tied to like all these people walked over for mexico so now you cant, which is completely ridiculous. Although theres a really weird kind of relationship there because in some ways you could argue that undocumented, not undocumented folks, but the government approach to undocumented folks is a reason she has been able to do, legalize. She was legal but she won her family to come and she claimed somehow legal immigrants, people couldnt get visas, they couldnt get the paperwork to become Illegal Immigrants because of this idea clogging up the system. There not even in the system. Thats true that because of the research has been moved away from naturalization to enforcement. Thats something thats happened since the reagan administration. So before this emigration used to be about lets try to get people naturalized as fast as possible. The main issue was the kind of quotas they put on each country, which for the most part they get rid of the 1965 and which still limit the number of folks who can become illegal lives every year. So if in the queue and your filipino or mexican, it will take you 20, 30 years to get to the head of the line, so to speak. Shes right in a really weird way, but for the wrong reason. But she also thought it was literally kind of like a numbers game, like if 5 million undocumented people disappeared, and 5 Million People would suddenly get immigration papers. The other thing she told is that she believed about Climate Change and trump is going to do things on Climate Change and he wasnt going to favor fossil fuel, you know, and bring back the bush era and things like that. Its like where did you get your information . Can i just go wring some doorbells and hanks and door hangers and escape from you . She was very for citrus and wanted to argue. So those are my two trump supporters. Except for all the men on facebook. [laughing] who are busy explaining. Its a long, theres variations on the scene. I didnt want, i dont want to sort of relitigate or relive november, but i guess i were to ask sort of how you are feeling now . And it was like trunk is rich and powerful people. So i find nothing about whats happened shocking except the intensity and courage of the resistance. I thought it might be a little bit like life after 9 11 where a lot of people were intimidated and afraid to speak up and there was kind of a patriotic paul over the land and were not having that problem right now. People are ferociously, energetically, beautifully outspoken and thats what i didnt anticipate. It makes me think of this as a you wrote in this book , thinking about sort of the loudness of the now. The sort of. Which i really want to get into but i also wanted to talk about sort of what that comes out of. You have this beautiful essay called the short history of silence in the book. And so i was wondering if you could Start Talking first of all about how you think about silence as opposed to quiet. Yeah, the english language is full of synonyms and words that overlap. And theres a good sense of silence, silence in a monolithic retreat, in terms of not looking to , listening to traffic noises but theres also being silent which i thought could really stand for a huge amount of what feminism has tried to address and theres literally being silenced, no Woman Holding positions of power in congress and the Supreme Court and the legal system, a womans testimony about being discounted, of things like that but theres also, you know, for the purposes of this i thought that client was kind of voluntary removal from noise units and silence was the thing thats enforced and you could really use that as a summary condition for what feminism has tried to address. The silencing that you know, that suspends your right to consent or not consent to what happens to you. Thats agency, thats the right to vote that we got in 1920, most of us and had to fight for all over again in the south and for men and women. But it was an interesting effort and i sat down to write about the way women are silenced and realized that gender is a system of reciprocal silence. Theres a kind of mail silence as well, that men are silent in different ways than women are. And that patriarchy requires different silences from people according to their categories. And that theres, you know, you had to look at the whole system as a whole. One of the things different about this book from men explaining things to me is as much about men and children as it is about women but its all feminism. Can you talk about the ways in which women are silenced in the ways in which men are silenced and which they are different . Im thinking in particular, i look at Stanford University and the brock turner case of course. It seems to illustrate many of these different kind of things but im curious if you can unpack what you think are the main differences in the silences and how those silences are overcome in different ways and what that means. I think of mail silence as all the things that men are not supposed to do and say and feel and like and i recount the conversation with my fiveyearold nephew a few years ago and his favorite colors were like pink, purple and orange and i was monitoring that, i knew that he wasnt going to stay with us so i was asking why he didnt like pink anymore and i knew exactly why. I knew that was girly and he couldnt like girl things and hes not yet five. Its not coming from his parents, its ambient. So many of you are parents who try to keep your sons from guns or wargames or Something Like that but its ambient , that stuff. Parents dont succeed in doing it alone. So i went shopping for my not yet born god sons, in the Clothing Department and the generating of newborns close was kind ofshocking. Boys close , it was rocket ships and astronauts and cowboys and Football Players and dinosaurs and reptiles, all this cold, active, distant stuff. Girls were all this passage, conley , stop but we all know boys dont cry, men are not supposed to express weakness in doubt and certain kinds of feelings and under these conventions and i think that theres a great deal of deadness. As you go to brock turner, to be able to do something horrible to another person, whether its any kind of violence, degradation, abuse, you have to have kind of shut down your capacity of empathy which is in a and a lot of small children and a lot of us retain imperfectly. Ive written about other places that you have to kill off part of yourself before you can become a killing machine and theres a way men are starting to weapon eyes as well. That they are not told this experiential sensation, they are kind of their weapons and you see all all that in the brock turner case. Which then had all these interesting wrinkles when the victim spoke up in court and became maybe the most well heard rate victim ever with that incredible letter she wrote. That really turned the tables in the power dynamic, she was given a chance to have a voice. We are in an era where victims were supposed to completely disappear although she appeared imperfectly because she never revealed her name and there was still that need protection from shame or further threats or the story following her and she just read this extraordinary thing that made him, that just. With justice diminished men do nothing in a very powerful way, it was extraordinary and spoke though with empathy for all other victims of similar crimes and really express the kind of greatness in her. In a way in which by having that voice, that empathy, that strength she hadnt been destroyed by an act that was meant to dehumanize and destroy her. You know, for me reading this, is just beautiful. Violence against women is often against our voices and stories. It is a refusal of our voices and what our voice means. The right to selfdetermination, to participation, to consent or dissent, to live and participate, to interpret and marry. Those are sort of what it means to be human. And we can talk about physical rights and Property Rights and economic rights and things like that but at the very core, having a voice is what it means to be human and we can look at jim crow or the for some reason ive beentalking about the antiantichinese riots in 1977 or different kinds of , theres a lot of ways that the disposition of native americans, of genocide, you know, the criminalization of homosexuality. Theres innumerable ways people have been silenced. The disappearance of the disabled but i thinkfeminists , its been a project of arriving at voices and quoting Susan Griffin is in the audience who is a great feminist heroine. [applause] and a great sort of new role model and friend of mine and she was part of this incredible thing that happened in the 70s. In the 60s, late 60s into the 70s which is the feminists writing about silence. Audrey ward wrote about it, is in wrote pornography and silence and kelly olson wrote silences and in the sai name a dozen works by feminists from that. That were really addressing silence. They were very clear what was at stake and it was the right to participate, the right to have agency, the right to have a voice, the right to show up and you know, the right to not be silenced. Theres this beautiful part of your book wanderlust which is sort of a meditation on the ideal work where you suddenly sort of shift gears up and talk about marching and women marching. Yeahs and it sort of, its a powerful chapter. Its one i use a lot with my students. And i guess i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your journey into feminism. Male violence is what made me a feminist and i grew up in a house full of it. Thinking all i had to do was escape. I escaped and when i was 19 moved to a neighborhood where there was massive street harassment. Im not just like a baby stuff, the implication was that you might get raped or murdered or tortured and while i was in constant danger, i lived because young women are still facing it and im now past the age of harassment except for certain blurry eyed bombs in new york city. And you know, its really a loss of basic freedom, of ability to move around, to be independent, to be a full participant. To be a member of civil society, to be in public and its really hard to get people treated as a civil rights, human rights issue. As women are told life, i should disguise myself as a man, i should buy a gun, learn martial arts, i should never leave them alone, i should move to a white server, i should make lots of money and have a car, i should be with a man at all times. Theres a fact that youre a target is a problem you need to solve rather than that we need to, you know, its not like we tell victims of lynching what were you wearing . I think its a comparable kind of crime. Its a hate crime and there have been some great movements. I feel like what these two books of mine men explain and the mother of all questions really are writing an incredible new wave of feminism that has been addressed in male violence with the clarity and refusal to see the ground and a collective voice through social media like weve never seen before. Its still a really hard to get people behind the idea that the ability to walk down the street without being threatened is a basic human right and in many places young women dont have. It happens to you and often you dont feel safe anywhere. Its like an initiation ritual to tell you you dont have full rights, youre a target. Billions of people may hate you and want to harm you for your gender alone. You should think about this in the parking lot, an elevator, you should think about this when you plan your vacations, you should think about this on the campus so its deeply damaging and so thats, male violence is what made me a feminist. Theres real beautiful dialectic in your essays around these questions. On the one hand, you are rigorously debunking the sort of narratives and the myths that silence women. And on the other hand, theres the cook thing. There is a way in which i feel like a lot of your writing is about the all and the wonder of what happens when folks come together or the law and wonder of the Natural World. In which you see a lot of parallels between the ecosystem and Natural World and the building of movements. And im wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, the and change thing. Well, hope has never felt sounded more like that this year. No, and its a tough moment because i think a lot of us secretly have a kind of enlightenment narrative that we were gradually progressing towards a more inclusive, humane, less prejudice society in this election. It troubled those waters a little. But i think is really important. This is sort of a footnote but to remember that trunk did not win a majority of the people who voted. 55 percent of the electorate voted, less than half of that voted for him and that in order to win the election we had to have massive voter disenfranchisement of people of color and i havent seen anybody asking the numbers but im guessing 15 million would probably be a kind of lowball number four how many people were prevented from voting and we had a problem with people who can vote and dont i also have a problem, 15 Million People, mostly people of color who were prevented from voting and then you know, we need a Voting Rights movement, urea franchise those people. Ill get back to the main question and then clinton doesnt win 3million folks, she wins 8 million more votes. If we had free and Fair Elections in the united states, republicans would never win a National Level election, that has taken massive corruption, the komi intervention, it took the Mainstream Media running from the light rightwing spin at a private server that they are using inthe Trump Administration with some kind of shocking thing, it took misogyny, the russian intervention, it took , you know, some salt getting really hit, kid glove treatment for a lot of, being that as sort of officers, a liar, a wouldbe rapist, an incredible racist and etc. So back to the question, i think hope, i feel like we love you , when you put a mark in the fact that these digressions are amazing. I have that time zone radio where im like 700, words along and i liked what was the question . I know what this one was, about the hope and change thing. The question is, if trumps election is fine and i think those people were there before, theyve been there all along. I think we need to figure out what reinforces the racism and the zeno phobia and the fear because conservative politics are fear driven. And scarcity driven and how do we tell our stories better and circulate them more broadly to reach you know, beyond the circle that already agree with us. How do we have more compelling stories. But the whole thing is, the trump election is pretty bleak in American History but if you look at the arc of American History, and i was born the same way the berlin wall went up. And you look, the world of 1961 and you know, women are so profoundly unequal, there are no laws against Sexual Harassment and discrimination. And Sexual Harassment in the workplace. Marital rape is not a concept, marriage is by law a deeply unequal relationship in which the husband essentially becomes the owner of the wife. And the ivy league did not admit womenand then we look, you can look at race and its , you look at the status of your people. Theres no language for the environment, Rachel Carson is working on silent spring but ideas about islands, a cumulation and downwind and the whole way these humans are thinking systemically dont exist yet. So in the past halfcentury, weve undergone an extraordinary and deeply antisectarian revolution and even though we are seeing these kind of authoritarianism, its against what weve accomplished and it wants to undo it but it will never be 1961 again i think and we are never, these are global changes, not Just National ones. Were not going to have, i dont think the status of queer people will ever, homophobia will not go away, discrimination may rise again but will never have the broad consent that there are very few gay people and their mentally ill or criminal and we can just keep them completely invisible through repression and criminalization. We will never not have that language for the environment and the knowledge that things are connected in the denial of Climate Change is a minority activity in the us with very little accompanied support but hope for me is really about the sense not that everything is going to be fine which is optimism and induces passively just like pessimism which is that everythings going to be horrible and theres nothing you can do about it which also induces passively. Hope is the thing that we dont know what will happen, its an acceptance of the true uncertainty that you can really understand the sudden emergence of things like Standing Rock and or occupy or black lives matter to bring up some of these just in these decades. Its the sense that what happens, that we may be able to play a role in it and its worth trying and thats my definition of hope which like my definition of silence isnt necessarily exactly the dictionary definition. Its the possibility, the acceptance of uncertainty and its interesting because we are in a time where people love their certainty more than they love possibility so its almost like a language struggle where people dont know how to use it subjunctive and say maybe if what if or we dont know that and i think people make crazy pronouncements like this will never happen, this will happen in three months and its like what are you god . You know, its like they dont know like the language of tonka toys when it needs to be some kind of much more sophisticated methodology. You are saying that you had written hope in the dark to snatch the mayor of despair out of the, clutching arms of love. People love that there. They love their despair like their love their perfection, its a great excuse for not doing anything. I love that image, teddy bear of despair because the teddy bear is probably like sort of alec baldwin sort of impression of trump. With the teddy bear of despair and you are kind of, its a security blanket, right . And i wrote hope in the dark and i felt very evangelical, i went on the road all over the country for a few years after that. And i met amazing people and i heard Amazing Stories and overall the reception was great but i got this kind of grumpy person, usually middleaged, middleclass white who was really angry at me and it was partly that there was a stake in theory and im inversely so maybe this is worth saying that being miserable is a form of solidarity. And you know what . Starving people and people in war zones are not actually buoyed up with the comfort that People Living in splendor in the usa are sulking over there you know, their organic arugula, their sandwiches and its not actually, but people, people thought that, they were really attached to their despair. And they really acted like i was hardhearted for trying to take that away from them because it meant i didnt love suffering people and its like no, i love that. I love ending suffering. And im really interested in being pragmatic and looking at what we can do and you know, be privileged while wallowing is not the solution. [applause] i think a lot of you out there already knew that but thats kind of what that attachment to despair is. I also said, in many years i came up with a bunch of descriptions that despair is a black Leather Jacket everyone looks cool in, open the frilly pink dress that nobody wants to wear. You go out there and you say im doomed, everythings going to hell and people are like that cant be right, you are full of it but you say, i think its amazing that something might come out of this and people are like thats ridiculous. And you know, its just as likely as the other but theres a historical record as to howards and celebrated before i came along, other extraordinary unforeseen things, the fall of the berlin wall in 1989 and the breaking up of the block, breaking away from totalitarian pseudo socialism. But thats like,we live in an extraordinary. And we have been surprised over and over again. The way samesex marriage arrive was just amazing. And that i think is actually being holistic, pragmatic and reasonable and that extraordinary things happen and we dont receivethem and despair , has that confidence and i think is bullshit. And you know, and its really more about, as so much on the left is, its about identity formation and doing useful work. Despair is him, half. And i throw a wrench into this western mark. Sure. Just complicated a little bit with a quote from somebody named rebecca. You are a seller of empathy and respect, not marginal to how we organize society. So its central to how we organize society then how do we overcome it . This is the question. You know, i think there has been, look at the way people are walked down into what you call their empathy zones, they empathize only withpeople like them. When you look at not everyone but a lot of people learning to bridge , differences around gender and Center Identity entrance identity and orientation, nationality, i think that people, i remember, i was very to critique that the photo book some of you remember growing up, i see a lot of gray hair out there, the family of man which was an attempt at a universal humanism and i was repeating some postmodernists attacking it and my aunt was born in 1937 and you dont understand how fragmented we were after the third reich, after the war. And i think a lot of people have gotten out of the bunkers and empathize more. One of the remarkable things i never written about adequately do i keep mentioning in passing is that the definitions of human nature weve inherited have been hobbesian social darwinism. I just found out where an economics major, i dont know if this is our dark secret. Absolutely true. Theres this idea of rationalself interest , we are alldeeply selfish and when writing my book , i most of us in an emergency, in a crisis kind of revert to a default setting where we are deeply altruistic and feel connected. You see emerging kind of neurobiology, psychology. Actually radical economic theory. A number of other fields, a real redefinition of human nature. These studies of small children say that we are inherently empathic and you look at capitalism, patriarchy, racism, etc. And these insistence to destroy empathy. I think empathy is unprofitable. Its like convince people they need to drive and you can sell them a car, if they walk everywhere, you can sell them shoes but its not the same kind of market and theres a sense that you know, misery and isolation makes us good consumers and theres a lot of things in the market, fear is important to conservative marketing and its what local tv news use to really run off with all the crime waves and sorts of things like that so theres a real assault on empathy thats been built in and the fact that a lot of people are empathic anyway, you know and not just in theory, if theres an emergency. There are these two women, economists the compound name, its like gibson, graham or something. I always forget it. Who really made me see that although if you asked what kind of the system we live in most of us would say a capitalist system but any relationships you are children, your friends, to maybe your church group or the nonprofit you might volunteer for, in hordes of the ways we are functioning in sort of nonopportunistic, nonselfish economies and thats what holds the world together. Capitalism is a colossal failure propped up by anticapitalism. It creates poverty and then people feedand house and tried to run free clinics. To ask wade that poverty. Capitalism destroys the environment and the sierra club and everybody else comes out to try to protect it from capitalism and what does the sierra club run off . Donations. So you see there is, why do people donate to the sierra club . It does not serve the selfinterest economics defined in any narrow sense. Its an idealism, wanting to be better that may not benefit them directly and maybe theyll never see and thats a really huge part of we are and its pragmatic and realistic and its recognizing and understanding that you can harness it and in a Movement Building way. You can change theworld and people have. Gandhi did, mandela did. Ella baker and all the rest of the people in the Civil Rights Movement did and people, the reverend in North Carolina, reverend barber doing that narrow one and i occupy was amazing like so many of these moments and you can see what a deep appetite people have for a meaningful life, a deep connection, a capacity to care or the most vulnerable, for a quality and inclusion like their response to economic collapse in argentina in 2001. So they are. Thats good. Take that, Rebecca Solnit. The question i had to, its not a question actually. In this conversation we had with amy on the democracy and color podcast with david, we were sort of talking about the politics of love. The notion that empathy hopefully could lead towards and an accident of the politics of love and you sort of through this thing out which was amazing to me and it made me kind of stop in my tracks. You said maybe its not hate that the opposite of love. Maybe its fear that the opposite of love. And i was listening to a country song. I didnt know outlaw country was a thing actually. I found out this past weekend and so i was listening to this outlaw country song. By Waylon Jennings . Willie nelson and, yeah. Theres this group called the flatlanders and they did this song hold borderless love and theres a lyric there that says Something Like its all too clear the fearless love and the loveless fear. And i just was like, whoa. It was pretty amazing. Im going to have to dingbat up. I like some country songs. You went into hiphop but after punk i kind of went into country. Old country, classical country, the kindof Tank Williams to Lucinda Williams with a lot of Merle Haggard and stuff in the middle. But i was doing it as an exercise, what is the opposite is a good way to define things and we had these conventional lovehate things. Next harpers column is about anger and i found it, what is the opposite of anger. And in some ways its curiosity. Caused anger is a profound kind of closemindedness and which is why its an in enormous presence in our culture now. I think its so destructive. Its a closing off of empathy but if i hate you, i want to cause you harm because i dont feel what you feel and empathy means to feel into and for me its my boundaries are no longer here, there beyond me and the profoundly empathic bodhisattva had a passion for all beings and kind of taking it all in and its partly fear that these people shutdown of their own vulnerability, they risk getting hurt. And you know, in kind of political circles also being wronged and things like that. Oh yes, i think that love and fear. And i also felt looking at anger which was a fascinating thing, being angry is miserable but its a way to escape other miseries which is sort of fear, doubt and the introspective miseries. Theres a great deal of confidence in rage and you know, so im interested and yes, how do we, how do we make it okay to not instill hate and fear. And i think is exactly what david was the center for love. What is it, love driven politics project is about whose name i may have mangled. Okay. But you know, he dares to use people, i talk about how other people talk about also was in the and finally sneaky ways around it but he uses that for l word right out loud which is on boston. Fearlessly. Lets talk a little bit about the idea of change and revolution, youve been thinking about the nature of change and youve been writing about that over your entire career. And sort of what kind of revolution would be need to be pushing toward so i think one thing that you said is that we need to get past the idea that revolution is only about regime change. As one starting point. I think going back to what i was saying earlier with the revolution, in my lifetime his theres an ongoing revolution and i think its deeply antiauthoritarian, the authority of bosses over employees, police over citizen and parents over children. Men over women. , colonizers over the colonized and its all really been delegitimized, even humans or animals for a lot of us. And you know, what were really talking about is starting a revolution. I think but feeding the long revolution in the midst of and we are removing the obstacles and you know, encouraging people to join the revolution. And not the counterrevolution which is powerful. Right now but whether i can win and how long that is is a real question. I think we are seeing a bunch of very conservative regimes in russia and Eastern Europe and the us and philippines and etc. And i dont know if this is like world war for coming and some sort of longterm momentum or if its just sort of blips but it will seem again and how do we feed that future to get something to change into his part of the question. One of the things you mentioned is that we cant be sure what the impacts are going to be of events that may happen or of things that may be generated. Yes, and thats something thats really central to the hopefulness and the work. I have a big piece that came out of the guardian on monday that she persisted. And it opens with Daniel Ellsberg who looks very near her and one of my great heroes. In conversation with Edward Snowden at city arts electorate in San Francisco a month ago , snowden says ellsberg had he not existed as an example, snowden would not have been able to do what he did, he watched the documentary most dangerous man in america before he did what he did. And that means not only did Daniel Ellsberg expose the corruption of six president s and the false premises of the war and help contribute to the end of that war, andthe discrediting of the nixon regime. But he laid the groundwork for really important acts in 2013 that would be performed by someone who wasnt born yet. And that isso amazing. Theres no way you can say in 1971 that im going to do this so a kid will be born in 1980 , 83 in 2013, and do this thing. So you know, you look at these longterm changes and i tell a story there that i love of the first real official act of civil disobedience is gandhi and the south Asian Community in other africa resisting the kind of racial, the caste system there and donnie then goes to london to continue to fight in this british controlledafrican territory. Three days after he lands , the suffragists invade parliament and eventually create civil disobedience except for thoreaus lovely term had been kind of extracted from that not that well known essay in the us and moved over to describe what they are doing and gandhi is so impressed by the suffragists and lights rice this amazing prophetic essay about people laughing these women but they will win. They laugh at us but we will liberate the subcontinent. Its completely amazing so theres a sense and then gandhi of course leads to the you know, sets up model empathic visions as love driven politics for the Civil Rights Movement. And sort of was able to go from these british women in 1906 two john lewis opposing the trump muslim band in the airport, john lewis the great civil rights hero. In january 2017. Its like , youre always planting seeds and who will harvest that fruit . You dont know, you have to plant the seeds knowing that you dont know. And thats a really important part of it or i guess i could call my credo. I didnt but i felt it. That was only about 2 and a half minutes ago. Do we have time for questions . Yes . I guess we have folks have been writing down their questions on cards. As we wait for the questions, i had a quick lightning round. Ill just say it, a couple names or things and quickly react. You are the mc. Somebody in the army. Oh, okay. If you have your questions on your cards, raise your cards and we will collect them right now. Lets go to this lightning round. Virginia woolf area. Yes. Tell me a little more though. Its such an Important Role in your writing. I like henry david throws novels, a kind of wholeness. Youre often told that politics has no pleasure and its not deep and soulful and that poetry has no politics. That writing is these two separate nonintersection apartheid stances and those are those writers and their probably the two most important writers for me have a body of work that refuses to make that division. The road gets out of jail and his historic act of civil disobedience and immediately leads a huckleberry and party and is insistent that you think about huckleberries and antislavery, antiwar going to prison together. Virginia woolf writes this beautiful introspective lyrical stuff and it writes the rule of one stone, rights against war. Its like really important feminist stop and she, she really holds big space i think for all of us and it was you dont have to feel like im going to accept this pigeonhole, im going to take this slot and shes also an incredibly gorgeous writer and a writer of about a lot of the same things i read about and its this kind of priestess of uncertainty, of the value of being in doubt and uncertainty. This kind of experimental method and the title hope in the dark comes from something she wrote in her journal during the first war, the future is dark i think which is the best thing the future can be. I always wonder, i want to resuscitate the word dark as something other than pejorative positive pejorative with racial overtones. As a desert rat, i love shade and night. And darkness. And so many origin myths start as the beginning of creation. I think creation always takes place in darkness whether its erotic or you know, artistic. The light drives out all the mystery and bad things arrive, except for port. Im well weve got really Great Questions here, the first of all thank you for your postelection leadership and activism, many activists are calling on the left to stay outraged and angry. As a motivation or a drive to action. How do you relate to this call for outrage and anger. And how does your activism relates to this. And to empathy . I think that, anger will eat your insideout and one of the things i know about angry people, i experience a lot during the election is that its sort of like a machine gun. They can shift just a little and turn into friendly fire. And i can think about the people who got all ripped up and stayed that way. I think its a really Destructive Force that i think outraged is a kind of indignation, a sense that this should not be so. But what i feel sure of is for most of the longterm activists i know, they love the environment more than they hate oil companies. They love just more than they hate people who carry out injustice. Hate is kind of, he is a kind of sugar you get a rush off but im afraid im going to go into a protein bar metaphor. Which is really sad and prophetic. And granola. But. All this is a sustaining force and its interesting, im the Antiabortion Movement is scary because they claim they love unborn babies so much which is hard to believe but they dont seem to give a damn about born babies. But also, they seem clearly driven by hatred of free sexual independent autonomous women, women with voices and agency. Could be fear . Well, but the patriarchy, this is why antiabortion is such an important platform and has been at least since Ronald Reagan and american patriarchy but i think you know, its not about being different to suffering and outrage and things like that but just, i think also staying in touch with what you love the stains you personally as well as politically. If youre in an environmentalist, go camping. If you care about human rights, hang out with people who are doing the work. And on whose behalf you think you are working. The in charge of your own liberation to but you know, outrage is a funny word. I think it often exists with outrage per se, its just a state of kind of indignation, of deep sense that this should not be so and hopefully then that i will do what i can to change it. This question is related and im telling this question because i got this past weekend at the tucson book festival. And it relates to the recent protests, student protests at Middleberry College where students disrupted the appearance of the neoconservative intellectual charles murray. Lets see, it says professor Allison Stanger is closed there, wrote an oped about it. And im not sure, actually what is often said but the question is asking what are your thoughts about the protests, relative to your thoughts on silence . Yeah, theres a huge debate on the left about violence and i still, im not a big fan of the idea that everybody should be nonviolent, im not going to tell the zapatistas what to do and i believe in everybodys right to selfdefense. You know, there was a really interesting story a few days ago about a woman jogger who got assaulted in the bathroom in seattle. Fallback the duty, and then help, he was kind of awesome. And you know, amy need toedit this for tv but she kept shouting not today. You know, but. Not ever. And this kind of movement is part of the united states, i never heard anybody make a great argument about how violence is going to get us where we want to go. And at least since this yeah the wto in 2000, in 99, really. 99, i was like no it cant be back that far back. Theres been a huge debate about diversity of tactics or tasteful euphemisms for can violence be part of nonviolent tactics. And just ive never really been greatly convinced. Im friends with mark reddy who was part of the weather underground. When they decided they were going to do violence they did it be, they blew stuff up and hes now kind of a ferocious and even aggressive proponent of nonviolence. And, but a real stickler about it because hes seeing people he knows get blown up and not that far away from people getting killed so nobodys really made a convincing case for me that squabbling with the police and the lighting garbage cans on fire and smashing windows is netting us any really great benefit and there are times like occupy oakland where i saw or actually i wasnt there when that was happening but i kept hearing stories including from the wheelchairbound friend of mine about the police getting whipped up into a frenzy by ablebodied people who then scampered off and left the moms with kids, with lower older people to bear the brunt of the police so i think you know, theoretically its possible that it hasnt yet seen the circumstances in which it belongs to this stuff but i also think what property destruction is violence is a complicated question. And i wrote during occupy that the firefighter breaks down the door to save the life, the husband breaks the dishes to demonstrate to the wife that he can also break her and what we do two objects and have a lot of different meanings. If there are any other questions, please hold your hand up with the cards. We have one over here. Another last round while we are at it. Beyoncc. Shes so great. Shes like the Virginia Woolf of hiphop, dont you think . Wax absolutely. The perfect analogy. This complex kind of feminism but also these long complex narratives shes now constructing. That you know, and her tremendous insistence on her own agency in her work and to go where shes going to go. And not even kind of stick to the genre and. Of course i heard one of her biggest influences is a woman named Rebecca Solnit. To quote beyoncc. [laughter] from formation which has become my new kind of silence but there is a very funny thing that happened in 2012 which divided my world into those who knew beyoncc and cared and those who didnt it was fun, so many in my family turned out not to be able to pronounce her name. She didnt care about beyoncc. Jeff is protecting you beyoncc tweeted a paragraph from a field guide to getting lost about the color blue a few months after the birth of her daughter blue ivy carter. People left to the conclusion because when youre that famous everybodys over interpreting and projecting like crazy that this was actually the explanation for why her daughter was named blue which turned into beyoncc named her daughter after. People didnt know there was this thing called nonfiction so i kept being turned into a novel or a poem or things like that and the sad thing is there are times when somebody mentions your boat and you get a little boot out of it but beyoncc fans turned out to be not big book buyers. But i am, and its also this kind of thing, im such a fact checker where at first i was like that school and then i was like no, im a journalist. Im trained as a fact checker. Id like beyoncc, is that why she her daughter that . Whats the origin of this story . It was innocuous fake news and then there was no direct source for this, people are making stuff up, im not going to take credit for it but im the person who edited my wikipedia so it no longer says i wasnt the end of an square and 89. And i was at the zapatista uprising in 94. I was like, whats that thing they say . The man who shot liberty valance . When the truth becomes legend, print the legend. Thats not actually, i went to Journalism School at berkeley, thats not actually what we were taught. Whats your take on the trumps proposed budget cuts on the National Endowment for the arts . What do you think the future holds for the arts and humanities . We have a small arts budget compared to canada which i think is about to double their arts funding under the oil pipeline guy. And hes very handsome but he keeps building pipelines, im not really a fan but you know, i received an nda. I work on my new orleans atlas, received an neh, that was instrumental too. Ive seen firsthand but one of the fascinating things about this kind of budgetcutting is that it doesnt really understand how economies work. That one of the things trump is doing is scaring off the tourist economy which is crashing pretty dramatically and for a lot of people including San Francisco and new york in new orleans, i probably should have been closer to this the whole time nobody told me. Wow. But this wicker chair has me leaning way back , its very guilty. But you know, the arts are a huge, have a huge benefit and so cutting them which they pretend, its tiny. Theyre spending more money protecting mill audio and trump tower and they are on the nea. You know, its really just a hate crime basically. And you look at all the ways theyre allocating spending and the Science Research actually benefits the country, cutting automobile in missions, people actually save money on gas reedit theyre doing all this stuff and in a funny way, theyre responding according to how the world should be rather than the way the world is so during these symbolic things that reinforce a kind of white patriarchal old ways. Like trumps whole obsession about coal. Coal is never going to be a useful fuel again. You know, and theres not that many coal miners and its never, its basically, i joke that make America Great again really means make america 1958 again. So theres a playtime ideal where its still 1958 and coal is our energy and Climate Change doesnt exist and lots of men working coal mining and we pretend that black lung and all the other hideous things dont happen. Was weird seeing them build an economy where destroy an economy based on kind of ideological fantasy rather than what works and i think the military right now is, were the biggest military in the world, what are we going to do with 10 percent more . Then of course it goes back to fear. If you throw more money at the military it will be safer and its like, what are we not safe from . Its been my experience white men with guns and male violence generally. The opium epidemic. And Health Crisis and Climate Change and stuff and thats one thing that i find interesting is this kind of bait and switch here game. But the nea, i know it will be a great symbol of victory and i thinkit also is about the kind of elites being crushed , thats me. Possibly you although youre not merely a pencil neck and i think thats an ally stevenson term. And so you know, it may or may not happen but hopefully republicans have wanted to do it for a long time and now theyre trying to live out all their fantasies and their fantasies are mostly destruction. It feels like the nea which was one of the first places to promote multiculturalism has become this symbolic thing in the way that obamas image became a symbolic thing of what needs to be done away with in order to make america 1958 again. It does represent a kind of diverse progressive integrated vision of culture and so this is kind of like, i dont know what their idea of culture is, ted nugent . So last two questions, we have gone through this night and not talk about the womens march which feels like a huge omission so the first question is, does it make sense that to me it makes perfect sense but i wanted to understand it from the way that youve been thinking about these questions. The womens march in terms of the way the uniting principles came out, sort of, advanced whole bunch of things that some people took issue with. You said well, Climate Change is not a feminist issue or it should be a feminist issue. Racial justice should be a feminist issue, Economic Justice shouldnt be a feminist issue but it seems like. Way to marginalize feminism . These are some of the faith that occurred around the unity principles and therefore folks and 4 Million People show up. For these principles. So the question i guess i had is like, will the rest of the resistance continue to be led by women . I hope so. Women are such, its slightly more than half of the human beings on earth so that doesnt feel like a restrictive category. And it also feels symbolically and antithesis to the all white male cabinet but we didnt talk about the wordintersectional. Which i always think of as literal intersection, a place where two things cross or this kind of, i was joking with you, its almost like an intersection and where talking about gender and race and everything else. And i feel like its something that we know and all these things are connected but we dont have, and would really benefit from , its a really powerful manifesto explaining how human rights in all the categories we recognize disability, orientation, etc. And Environmental Justice are connected and it is wonderful seeing people refuse to be separate. Where they can pick you off when their separate and seeing the sierra club and 50. Org to stand up for black lives matter a year or two ago and to see Racial Justice is not separate from what we are working for and black lives matter developed a climate platform. And to really refuse, every time victorians separate usand say , my, your suffering doesnt have anything to do with their suffering, thats not very far from you have nothing to do with them were going to put them in camps or exclude them unfolds as an ship or you know, youre going to watch them lose their meals on wheels and youre not going to care about that because we convinced you you are separate. I love that, not insufferable, what do we call indivisible . That was this brilliant thing that was put out by the former congressional aide, what was so funny about that . You know, it was called indivisible but it really was about solidarity. And which is empathy which like, we can use the scary word love. And fear just divides and hate divides. Theres a wonderful line in Gloria Steinems memoir that which is quoting robin morgan. Shes a politically correct person but did lovely stop saying that he generalizes, love particular rises but i think it also, hate divides and love connects area and but, i think that indivisibility is a foundational principle but articulating some of the practical and economic also kind of ritual and moral ways , you cant deal with these things in isolation. I know that reverend barber was this person in North Carolina has seen connecting Economic Justice and Racial Justice is a really important part of the project and then kind of not trying to leave anyone out. Its art of what the struggle is is to not leave anyone out. Last question, pertaining to the womens march, what is the importance of eatingcats. I think. a different question. That was johns question. And that was awesome. Kind of like cat woman. [laughing] Rebecca Solnit everyone. [applause] amazing. Thank you all for being here tonight. Go to the back of the room and form a line. Thank you guys so much for coming out. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. Tweet us, twitter. Com booktv, or post a on our facebook page,loto facebook. Com booktv. John tamny is with us today courtesy of hall mcadams and barbara hall. He is senior fellow at reason